TAIEX extends gains
Share prices extended their gains yesterday as bargain hunters turned active, especially in late trading, to take advantage of low valuations after the sell-off of recent weeks, dealers said.
The TAIEX closed up 95.17 points, or 1.24 percent, at the day’s high of 7,741.36, off a low of 7,602.68, on turnover of NT$106.79 billion (US$3.67 billion).
ProMOS statements postponed
ProMOS Technologies Inc (茂德科技), the nation’s third-largest maker of computer memory chips, will delay the reporting of its second--quarter financial statements as the company and accountants failed to agree on the method of assets evaluation, the company said in a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday.
Vibo secures NT$5bn in loans
Vibo Telecom Inc (威寶電信), a Taiwanese mobile services technology provider, signed NT$5.1 billion of loans, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The three-part facility matures in 2016 and was organized by Chinatrust Commercial Bank (中國信託銀行), DBS Group Holdings Ltd (星展集團), Entie Commercial Bank (安泰商業銀行), Jih Sun International Bank Co (日盛銀行) and Ta Chong Bank Co (大眾銀行), the data showed.
First Financial rated ‘twA+’
Taiwan Ratings Corp (中華信評) yesterday assigned a “twA+” credit rating to First Financial Holding Co (第一金控), indicating the state-run conglomerate’s long-term outlook is stable, the rating agency said in a statement.
The rating reflected the agency’s view that the nation’s fifth-largest financial service provider by assets has adequate capitalization with improving profitability, the statement said.
First Financial, which draws 90 percent of its income from the banking unit, might not see a drastic change in its risk profile or profitability in the next two to three years, the statement said.
Barclays’ Kuo to join Citigroup
Citigroup Inc has hired Gary Kuo (郭冠群) from Barclays PLC to be vice chairman of its Asia global banking division, the company said yesterday in a press release.
Kuo will report to Farhan Faruqui, regional head of global banking, the statement said. He will be based in Taipei.
He will join Citigroup after less than a year at Barclays as co-head of investment banking for Greater China. Prior to that he spent almost a decade at Morgan Stanley, the release said.
Gintech posts first-half loss
Solar cell maker Gintech Energy Corp (昱晶能源) on Tuesday reported a first-half net loss of NT$180 million, or NT$0.53 per share, the company said in an e-mailed statement.
Rival Motech Industries Inc (茂迪) reported first-half net profit of NT$34.68 million, or NT$0.11 earnings per share, the company said in a separate statement on Tuesday.
Books.com tops site list
Online retailer Books.com.tw (博客來) topped the list of the top 50 online shopping sites in Taiwan, followed by PChome Online Inc (網路家庭) and Yahoo-Kimo Inc’s (雅虎奇摩) shopping sites, according to Chinese-language Business Next magazine, which released the list on Tuesday.
Books.com.tw achieved the highest score in three of the five indexes used to determine the ranking — security, popularity/satisfaction and marketing. The other two were innovation and service.
NT dollar up against greenback
The New Taiwan dollar rose against the US currency yesterday, adding NT$0.015 to close at NT$29.020.
Turnover totaled US$806 million during the trading session.
STAFF WRITER, WITH AGENCIES
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts